Paint Schoodic

Join us on the American Eagle in June or in Acadia National Park in August. Click here for more information.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Seven days of wood smoke and crackling leaves—Arkhip Kuindzhi

A Birch Grove, Arkhip
Kuindzhi, 1880

I’m in Maine for my last 2013 painting workshop! The frost
isn’t quite on the pumpkin (at least not in Rockland or Rochester) but autumn is
in the air. I’m leaving some wonderful fall landscapes for you.

I never give enough attention to the great Russian painters,
an oversight I can’t correct here since they deserve a full week of their own.
But today I’ll content myself with giving you a rather unusual birch grove by Arkhip
Kuindzhi.

Kuindzhi frequently painted the play of light through trees. He painted birches
countless times, although this is the only nocturne I'm familiar with (although this
being Russia, it could just be late afternoon in late October). His paintings
are often simplified, stylized, and monumental, which gives an unreal eeriness
to his work.

Kuindzhi was orphaned young and grew up terrifically poor.
He was forced to find his own art instruction. As an outsider, he was a natural
to join the Peredvizhniki—“wanderers” or “itinerants”—a
group of Russian realists who, locked out of the formal Academy, formed an
artist’s cooperative. Like the Canadian
Group of Seven, these painters used landscape painting to make a case for the
beauty and power of their native land.

Autumn Impassibility of Roads, Arkhip Kuindzhi, 1872

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in
2014. Click here for
more information on my Maine workshops!